The Pittsburgh Press (May 6, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
London, England – (by wireless)
I hadn’t realized now immersed one can become in a war zone until we got to Casablanca, where there is no war.
Our war at Casablanca was brief and has long since moved on and far away. Our soldiers there now are only a few. They handle the port, which still receives supplies, and they handle the flow of airplanes to and from the war zones, but Casablanca really is a city at peace.
More than anything else you are impressed by the traffic on the streets being normal traffic. In every other city I had been in of recent months the streets were choked with speeding Army trucks, both American and British. Everywhere you would see a hundred Army vehicles for every local one.
But Casablanca has returned to its old ratio. Local autos and trucks and horse-drawn barouches fill the streets. The olive drab of the American uniform stands out as an individual thing among the sidewalk crowds, rather than forming a solid sea of brown as it does in our other war cities.
Being now such a backwash of the war, our few soldiers in Casablanca are bored. Some of them have been there a year and a half. They live almost normally, which in a manner is really the worst way to live during a war.
I talked to one officer who was typical. His chin was down. He said:
A WAC could do my job. A cripple could do my job. I’m young and healthy and should be at the front. But here I am, and here doubtless I will stay.
Crisis of the necktie
Military regulation is always stricter the farther away from the front you get. There in Casablanca they regulate your appearance, which is something you usually don’t have to worry about in Italy.
I did go so far as to get a clean uniform before leaving Italy, and considered myself very much dressed up. Yet when we go to Casablanca, I suddenly realized that anybody in uniform without a necktie was practically naked.
Once upon a time I had a necktie, but that was long ago and I have no idea what became of it. In Casablanca, I was caught between the devil and the sea, for one regulation required that you wear a necktie while another forbade transients from buying neckties at the post exchange.
My good name was saved by a soldier who took pity on me. This was Sgt. Ed Schuh of Altoona, Pennsylvania. He asked me up to his room for a chat one afternoon and, seeing my pitiful condition, gave me one of his numerous neckties.
Sgt. Schuh has a sister who is a nurse in one of our Army hospitals in England, and I promised to carry a verbal message to her. But the prospects of my succeeding look slim. This necktie will have me choked to death before I ever find her.
The Air Transport Command treats you well on these long trips. During our several days’ layover at Casablanca, waiting for the weather over the ocean to clear up, the ATC put us up at the best hotel in town and fed us fine food at an Army mess in another hotel.
My roommate for this stay was Lt. Col. Maynard Ashworth of Columbus, Georgia. Time was really heavy on our hands. There is nothing worse than waiting from day to day in a strange place for a plane to get ready to go somewhere. You don’t feel like settling down to reading. You’ve seen so much foreign country already that you don’t enjoy sightseeing. So, you just lie on a bed and look at the ceiling and count the slow passage of the hours and days.
Pal from Pittsburgh
One day, however, Col. Ashworth and I got a guide and went through the medina, which is the Arab quarter. I had been in medinas before, and they’re picturesque but horribly filthy. I would just as soon never see another one.
Another afternoon we hired a horse and buggy and took a long drive out along the seahorse road. We passed the country hotel where President Roosevelt stayed when he was there.
A couple of friends who helped us pass the time were Lt. Col. Tom Cassady of Pittsburgh and Maj. Charlie Moore of Inglewood, New Jersey, old acquaintances of mine from Marrakech and Dakar.
Lt. Col. Cassady is a son of Mrs. Susan Cassady of 521 El Court Street, Wilkinsburg, and was proprietor of two downtown parking lots before being called from the Officers’ Reserve to active duty in 1940.
He had been with the 176th Field Artillery for about 15 years, but after returning to service as a major he transferred to the Air Force and later to the Air Transport Service, with which he is stationed in North Africa now, his family reported.
Everybody was wonderful to us, and Casablanca is the nicest city I’ve seen in the Mediterranean Theater, and the weather was lovely – and yet a person who has nothing to do but wait almost goes crazy under the best of circumstances.